1.Be confident and realize that you are pitching at all times. I can't tell you how many times I'm at a social event and someone tells me about their startup with the pitch equivilent of a "wet noodle" handshake. Everytime you tell someone what you do, that's a pitch. Knock it out of the park every time.
2. Tell me something you learned about the market or your users--shows you are adaptable. The worst thing an entrepreneur can do is be "strong and wrong". The best ideas are iterated on constantly--and the last person an investor wants to talk with their company about is someone who can't take feedback.
3. Tell me who you can partner with and why this is a priority for them. It is so incredibly difficult to build traffic or revenues from scratch. Partnerships are often the key to your uptake--so help investors understand who else in the market would be willing to work with you.
4. Who currently supports what you're doing with real action? Has anyone made a bet on you, or does the investor need to be the first one in the pool? Employees working for sweat equity, customer committments, family and friends willing to break their piggybanks for you--anything to make it so that the person you're talking to doesn't feel like Will Ferrell--naked in the town square with no one running behind him.
5. Show investors that you understand how to get users economically in a way that supports the model. For example, I can't tell you how many products I've seen that offer $10-50/month subscription fees and the company tells me about going the direct sales route. That would only work if your salespeople are willing to eat bread and water... and not particularly often.
6. Convince investors that you are obsessed with the problem you are solving. This needs no explanation, but is often lacking.
7. What have you learned from your competitors--know them like the back of your hand. If an investor asks you, "Do you know the folks doing "x"?" and "x" is anything having to do with your business whatsoever, the answer better be yes, and you better know how you're better than them, can learn from them, or can work with them... and preferably you already have spoken with them.
8. Know your realistic, addressable market. If you're selling potato peelers and only 10 million people in the country eat potatos, don't say you're going to sell 8 million peelers in year one.
9. Appreciate the feedback. If you tell someone about your business, expect a reaction. You might not like the reaction, but all feedback is good. Don't try to debate people--just respond cordially with facts or assumptions that answer their question. If you don't have those, don't start shovelling and never, ever, dismiss anyone's feedback.
10. Come see David Rose at Fordham this Thursday, March 12, 2009:
On Thursday, New York's most active community participant from the investment side, David Rose, will be at Fordham talking about pitching and raising angel capital. David is the founder of NY Angels and runs RoseTech Ventures. RoseTech also operates an incubator on 23rd Street and is a renowned pitch coach as well.
We will also be letting 5 companies give their two minute elevator pitch (and we really mean two minutes) for David to critique.
Date: Thursday, March 12 Time: 06:00 PM to 08:00 PM Organizer: Fordham TEC
Location: Fordham University Graduate School of Business 33 West 60th Street 12th Floor New York, NY - 10023, USA
Last month video network Hulu requested that media center Boxee remove all of the Hulu video streams. Today NY-based Boxee is announcing that they have been able to partially figure out a way around the ban/block by utilizing RSS feeds. If you download the latest Boxee release, you can import media RSS feeds which can include sources Google Video, Yahoo!, YouTube and also Hulu public feeds. Apparently it's not as sexy as the former integration but it will get you by. You can also import media RSS feeds from any website.
Boxee staff does note that today's release hasn't gone through much testing so don't moan if it turns your mac into a pc.
Boxee is also launching an "App Box" which allows for easy installation of new applications. They note that there's also native support for 3rd party repositories so developers can send out apps without having to go through the main Boxee app library. I wonder if this is one of the ways Boxee will monetize...by charging for featuring certain apps.
Check out my video interview with Boxee co-founder Avner Ronen.
I spent most of this afternoon at the Google East HQ at the Google Maps and Earth Hackathon. I am very glad I attended as I entered with basically zero knowledge about how to write code for Google Maps and now I know enough to get started. About 40 people attended the hackathon and surprisingly only about 50% had Macs - was nice to see.
I sat next to a few NY Times employees who appear to have a great handle on coding for Maps and Earth. I left my card with them and hope to get a video interview to learn more about how they are utilizing the technology at the Times. My advice is even if you aren't a developer, check out the hackathon events just to see what the latest uses are for the various Google tools.
Googlers Roman, Manu and Osama were on hand to help with questions. Each provided an overview at the beginning of the session which included a few pretty interesting examples:
Yelp uses a static Google Map on review pages but if you interact with the map, it immediately loads the full, dynamic rich experience. This helps Yelp keep the initial page load as light as possible but offering the full functionality when needed.
Trulia uses the standard Google Maps API but overlays their own tools around the map to make it more personalized.
There was another example but it appears I wrote it down incorrectly. I thought it was "galagi.com" - basically the site combines Maps and Earth and allows you to "drive" a route after you enter a set of addresses. It was pretty damn cool and if anyone knows the actual site name, please leave it in a comment.
After the intial demos, the Google team was around answering questions. Each of the Googlers spent over 15 minutes with me talking about different examples and showing me various code snippets. Google even offered a fancy spread of food for everyone.
I talked with some of the attendees about why Google Maps continues to increase their share against Mapquest. My belief is that it's events like the Hackathon today that shows the reason. Google made their Maps tool open to allow people to build upon it. It's not just a simple map/driving directions tool -- when you see what people build upon it, you know it's way more than that. Sure Mapquest will continue to add new features -- but will it be enough to keep the service top of mind, even for the less than average Internet users like my mother? More on this topic soon.
Here are a few updates from a variety of NYC-based startups.
uTest
Last week we posted a demo presentation and some notes about uTest. This week the company announced the launch of mobile application testing. They currently have 15,000 testers from 150 countries available to complete the tests that companies setup although I am not sure what percentage are mobile testers. The company noted regarding the launch, "uTest provides real-time access to testers with a wide range of locations, languages and platforms, specifically important to mobile app developers; having many unique dimensions in a testing matrix is a reality (and a daunting task) for mobile developers."
KickApps
This week KickApps announced a new partnership with Hearst-Argyle Television which will bring the KickApps social media app to Hearst's nation-wide network of television-station websites. The program is named "u local" and will be pushed out to 25 television websites during the first half of 2009. The first u local website went live in December 2008 in Manchester, New Hampshire. Check out all of our KickApps coverage.
Pingg
When we interviewed Pingg founder Lorien Gabel last month, we discussed the partnership Pingg has with Martha Stewart. Stewart is an investor in Pingg and this week they two companies announced the next step in integration. The release notes, "Martha Stewart and her team of expert designers have culled a special collection of diverse, stunning images from MSLO’s extensive content libraries that can now be incorporated into online invitations and e-cards."
In the wake of all this Skittles dustup, what can a food brand do? I wanted to comment on Charlie's post, but I decided yesterday that I didn't have anything to add- Charlie said it right. I knew that I didn't really like the site, thought it was derivative of Modernista's home page...but what was Skittles supposed to do? What can the web do for food brands until mind control beams?
After seeing a Kashi ad on TV, enticing me to visit their web site and get a free frozen entree, I said, let's just see about this. Conclusion: Kashi did something very cool.
As background: I love Kashi. I didn't always. Kashi used to be these crazy rice puffs my friend Matt would eat, and I wasn't really up for that. After I started trying to eat better about 18 months ago, I discovered Kashi frozen entrees, and shortly thereafter the GoLean cereal. In my apartment right now I have Kashi GoLean cereal on the shelf and a Southwest Chicken frozen entree in the freezer. I am a loyal consumer. I tell people about Kashi products. A lot. The products work in my lifestyle: whole grains, protein, and trying to avoid artificial sugars. But not everyone is as vigilant as I am :)
Now, as a comparison, it might not be fair to suggest that Skittles can claim any kind of identification with me, because hey, when was the last time I bought candy? OK. However, what Kashi executes is something that is relevant, connects you to the core of the company, and gave me something in return. Here's the Black Bean Mango Frozen Entree.
See the additional contest on the right? You better believe I want a year's supply of Kashi food!
I decided to join their community, which iactually has some very intersting things about reaching goals, whatver they might be, in wellness and mind/soul health, not just nutirition. How about: Challenge yourself to sanitize your sponges? I think this site does great things for the brand. Is it personable? You bet. Here's the Kashi Customer Relations staffer's profile:
If you're wondering what at thoughtful company Kashi is, check out their registration Captcha. I'm not opposed to ones like ReCaptcha, which I think works rather well, but this was fantastic, and so refreshing:
You could request a verification email instead, but why would you want to?
I willingly entered my home address three times on Kashi.com because I realized, if there is one food brand I wouldn't mind hearing
from, it might be Kashi. For all the fanfare Skittles got, the TV campaign Kashi is running, the website offer of a free frozen entreee, and a well thought-out cxommunity site that seems to have some genuine activity to it, seems like at least a viable alternative to cxreating a social media firestorm just so people will talk about Skittles. Instead, try Kashi.
While I was in business school, I worked part-time as a resume editor for the schools office of Career Services. During that time, I wrote the guide below on “How to Write a White-Hot Resume and Personal Marketing Plan”. Given the economy, I thought that many people would find this helpful. It’s also very pertinent to people applying for business school.
I’ve been asked recently to present to law firms (in NY, CT and DC) on practical ways to improve their online presence, and combine this with traditional relationship building methods. The result is this presentation, which describes specifically how to polish a LinkedIn individual or company profile, obtain speaking opportunities and be quoted in articles with minimal effort, and use surveys and low-key events that allow industry executives (who are your potential clients) to mingle.
The steps require between 1/2 hour and 2 hours a week for your partners who emphasize business development. The range depends on whether you want to be simply “credible” in your online presence, or “facilitative” in blending networking and outreach with online activities, as shown on my slide about the efforts & results continuum from “Simply Present” to “Online Leader.”
For those attorneys and practices that still are challenged to find time to build their presence and relationships, online marketing consultants (there are talented independent consultants these days so less need to hire a firm) can make it easy and cost-effective to draft content and research speaking/article/outreach partners, while leaving the final sign-off and interpersonal communications to you.
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4. Who currently supports what you're doing with real action? Has anyone made a bet on you, or does the investor need to be the first one in the pool? Employees working for sweat equity, customer committments, family and friends willing to break their piggybanks for you--anything to make it so that the person you're talking to doesn't feel like Will Ferrell--naked in the town square with no one running behind him.
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